For those of use who loved Ron and Hermione in the Harry Potter stories, it is
melancholy to learn that their creator reckons she got it wrong

It maybe a while since the name of Harry Potter flitted across your consciousness. Long enough, perhaps, for there to be a momentary hesitation in placing him. Boy wizard, busted specs, nasty scar? That’s the one.

Possibly the last time he featured in your mental landscape was in 2011, with the release of the final instalment in the film saga. The concluding scene features a thirtysomething Harry, married to Ginny Weasley, and his chums Ron and Hermione, spliced to each other, seeing their own nippers off to Hogwarts.

Some us felt a stirring of unease at the time. Ron and Hermione? Really? Studious, serious and slightly sanctimonious, Hermione seemed an unlikely partner for the laddish and accident-prone Ron. She is a more cerebral and reflective character. Flash forward a couple of decades and it is possible to imagine Ron retreating gloomily to his shed to commune with his collection of pet owls while Hermione goes off to moan about him to her women’s encounter group.

It turns out that those of us who felt some misgivings at the match were prescient. Interviewed by Emma Watson, the actress who played the role of Hermione, author J K Rowling admitted that she thinks the couple would have ended up needing relationship counselling.

Needless to say, Rowling’s obiter dicta have caused chagrin among her readers. Pamela Ingleton, an academic and author of the sonorously titled study, “Neither Can Live while the Other Survives: Harry Potter and the Extratextual Afterlife of JK Rowling”, remarked that some Harry Potter fans felt Rowling was “entering on their territory” by continuing to exert imaginative control over her characters’ afterlives.

The question of who fictional characters “belong” to is a fraught and fascinating one. The novelist Helen Dunmore recently said that while she didn’t like to let her characters go, “obviously I must remove myself, because that’s what you have to do. And it’s a good moment when you say [to the readers] the book is no longer mine. It’s now yours.”

The trouble is that as consumers of fiction, our ownership is implacably limited by the constraints of the author’s invention. It can be a frustrating relationship on either side. For a reader, the experience of finishing an entrancing story is both mournful and strangely addictive. I remember turning the pages of the Narnia books more and more slowly when I first read them as a child, reluctant to leave that charmed world.

Decades later, a degree in Eng Lit and a fluent grasp of critical theory have left absolutely no mark on my relationship with beloved fictional characters. Rereading Sybille Bedford’s A Legacy, or Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate, I secretly hope every time that things will turn out differently for Bedford’s gentle Johannes, or Mitford’s captivating Linda.

Perhaps the only situation more wretched than that of a reader whose pet character comes to a sticky end is that of an author inseparably shackled to a wildly popular fictional alter ego whom they have come to loathe. Pity poor Arthur Conan Doyle, determined to bury Holmes, who “keeps my mind from better things”, or Louisa May Alcott, slogging away at Little Women and complaining to her diary that she did not “enjoy this sort of thing” because she “never liked girls”.

For those of use who loved Ron and Hermione and wished their ill-assorted union well, it is melancholy to learn that their creator reckons she got it wrong. On the bright side, at least we know that she still cares about Harry and his chums. As she remarked to Oprah Winfrey in 2010, “I think I’m done – but you never know.”